Covid-19, Demographics, Risk Analysis and Mobile Apps

Finally, it seems we have accumulated enough data from Covid-19 cases to focus in on how we can properly and strictly protect our vulnerable populations and reopen our economies.  We know that if a person has underlying health problems* they have a far higher risk so need additional protections.  We know that people over 65 years old and people living in long-term care facilities are more at risk.  In fact, the most recent update from Idaho's Covid-19 statistics show 58 of the 60 reported deaths occurring in individuals 60 or older.  If a person does not fit any of these three high risk categories, then their risk of getting seriously ill from Covid-19 is small.  This data seems to suggest that giving different guidance to different segments of our population may have merit.

Mobile Expert Interviews: The Convergence of Enterprise Mobility and IoT

In this episode of Mobile Expert Interviews, I have the pleasure of interviewing three veteran enterprise mobility, field service, IoT and UI experts from TotalMobile in Belfast and the England.  We cover the the subjects of how IoT and enterprise mobility are converging, the role of AI, and how all of these developments are speeding up the delivery of products and services.  We also explore current and future developments in both healthcare and field services.  Enjoy!



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Kevin Benedict

Principal Analyst, Digital Strategist - the Center for Digital Intelligence™

Website C4DIGI.com

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Chatbots Rising - Learning from Oracle's Suhas Uliyar

I had the privilege today to interview Oracle's mobile and Chat Bot expert, Suhas Uliyar.  In this video interview we discuss the four components of Chat Bot development, how they utilize mobility platforms, sentiment analysis, APIs, personalization, decision-trees, AI and much more.  Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/2A8oaJr1dcY  

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Time, Speed and Space - Mobile vs. Static Apps

Most of today’s technology was designed and developed for static, stationary environments.  Even today, in a mobile world, mobile apps are most often developed based on assumed static endpoints.  Why is that a problem?  We are rarely static people.

Let’s consider two people in a vehicle.  The driver, assuming they use their smartphone only when safely parked, searches for places, locations and directions based on a static starting point.  However, if the person searching for places, locations and directions is a passenger in a moving car, a different set of information is appropriate.  One based on movement, speed, direction, intersections, changing distances, etc.  How should those variables change the way mobile apps are designed?

If you want to meet up with friends or family members who are travelling, in transit, or commuting, today’s mobile apps require you to select a stationary physical address in order to provide a map and direction.  Mobile apps designed with static assumptions are not going to help you coordinate an intersection point based on time, space and speed.  What if you want to meet as soon as possible to exchange children after a soccer game?  Today’s apps are not going to help.

What if you want to meet up with a mobile business?  Someone who sells handmade jewelry or crafts at different locations everyday?  Wouldn’t it be useful to search and find a real-time and accurate address, rather than a static, out of date, physical address?

If you are working outdoors, or in a hardhat industry, you will often need to coordinate with contractors and subcontractors bringing specialized equipment and materials to a jobsite.  Often these moving parts must all come together at once in order to complete a project.  Wouldn’t it be useful if your project management software were using real-time dynamic information (GPS, IoT sensors, mobile apps, etc.) that utilized real-world times, space and speeds to update schedules dynamically?

Calendars apps assume static locations and times, but is that how the real world works?  What if we assumed constant motion, changing variables, obstacles and dynamic schedules?  You know, like in the real world.  How would your mobile calendar apps behave differently?

A transformation in thinking and design needs to take place, one based on the real world, rather than on static models.
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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The 18 Laws for Winning with Data, Speed and Mobility

I have given nine presentations in the past 10 days on mobile and data strategies.  I have met with companies in the energy, media, insurance and banking industries.  I have brainstormed and discussed these laws for winning with data, speed and mobility, and they have held up.  In the age of mobile me, where information is the prize, a new set of laws and strategies are required to win.  In my new report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me," I discuss many of these laws and how they are applied in mobile apps and mobile commerce.

1. Data is the modern commercial battlefield.
2. Information dominance is the strategic goal.
3. Real-time operations and tempos are the targets.
4. Advantages in speed, analytics, business operational tempos determine the winners.
5. Real-time business speed is enabled by advances in mobile information, sensors and wireless communications.
6. Competition is now focused on optimizing information logistics systems (the systems involved in maximizing information advantages).
7. Businesses that can “understand and act with speed” dominate those which are slower. 
8. In order to win or gain superiority over competitors in the age of information, you must operate  information logistics systems at a faster tempo, and get inside your competitor's decision curves. (Adapted from John Boyd)
9. Situational awareness enables insights, innovations and operations to be conducted faster and at lower cost .
10. Principle of Acceleration & Mobility – As demand for mobile apps increases, an even greater demand for changes will occur across business processes, operations and IT.
11. The more data that is collected and analyzed, the greater the economic value and innovation opportunity it has in aggregate.
12. Data has a shelf-life, and the economic value of data diminishes quickly over time.
13. The economic value of information multiplies when combined with context and right time delivery.
14. Mobile apps provide only as much value as the systems behind them.
15. Full Spectrum Information: Winners will dominate by collecting, transmitting, analyzing, reporting and automating decision making faster and better.
16. The size of opponents and their systems and platforms are less representative of power today, than the quality of their sensor systems, mobile communication links and their ability to use information to their advantage.
17. Information is a new asset class, in that it has measurable economic value.  There are significant strategic, operational and financial reasons for investing in it, and optimizing it. (Douglas Laney, Gartner)
18. If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan in unimportant. ~ Robert Leonard

These laws need to be known, and their relevance intimately understood and applied to every aspect of business and IT today.

Download the new report "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me" - http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Commerce Strategies and CROME Triggers

In my research on mobile commerce and mobile consumers' behaviors this year, the need to personalize a user's mobile/digital experiences always comes up as a top priority.  Everyone wants an experience that is relevant. However, as I pondered these studies, it occurred to me that personalization is only a part of the solution. If you received an SMS message on your smartphone about a shoe sales (your favorite brand and style), that ended yesterday, at a location hundreds of miles away, the personalization would be without value.  Yes, it is your preferred brand and style, but not in your location or at a relevant time.  So there is something missing.

We, at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, have identified through our research the need for CROME (contextually relevant, opportunities, moments and environments) triggers.  CROME triggers are bits of data that provide context, which can be used to provide relevant personalization at a specific time and place. For example, you buy concert tickets on a mobile app.  When the event ends, the app automatically shows you (based on CROME triggers) available car services and public transportation close to your location with an option to order a pick-up with one click.  The CROME triggers in this example are:

• The purchase of concert tickets
• Known date and time of concert
• Known location and venue
• Recognized distance from your home address
• Your movement which predicts the concert has ended
• Your physical location
• Weather conditions
• Visibility into the locations of available cars

These CROME triggers provided the data that when analyzed, understood and integrated with relevant personalization engines, can optimize the user's experience.

There are at least six challenges when implementing a CROME strategies:

1. Identify the required CROME triggers
2. Understand what specific CROME triggers mean
3. Understand where and how CROME triggers can be placed, collected and transmitted
4. Monitor and analyze CROME triggers in real-time
5. Connect specific CROME triggers to specific personalization options
6. Provide CROME powered personalization in mobile experiences

CROME triggers inform you something different and perhaps significant is happening.  Finding the meaning, and then relating it to a need for personalization is the topic of my next article.

Stay tuned for my new report, Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of "Mobile Me".

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

The Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 2

This article is part 2 in a series I wrote and published in an intelligence and defense industry trade journal.  You can read Part 1 and Part 3 here.

Operational Tempos and Mobility

Supporting real-time mobility is more than just a technology issue. It also requires companies to support real-time operational tempos. An operational tempo, in the context of this article, is defined as the speed or pace of business operations. Achieving a satisfactory operational tempo in order to support real-time mobility is a significant challenge and extends far beyond the IT environment and deep into decision-making and business processes.

Changing an enterprise’s operational tempo requires strong leadership that can transform the entire organization. It often requires significant IT updates and upgrades, organizational changes, and reengineering business processes and decision-making matrixes to align with real-time demands.
The military strategist and U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd taught that in order to win or gain superiority over an opponent, one should operate at a faster tempo than the opponent. Today competition is increasingly around the quality of mobile users’ experiences, data management, integrated IT systems, and the speed with which data can be collected, analyzed, and utilized. Robert Leonhard in the book The Art of Maneuver writes on the role of tempo and speed, “If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan is unimportant.” The words “faster than you can execute” in Leonhard’s context refer to the tempo of operations.

In a fast changing world, mobile applications are competing for users and acceptance against the
status quo (traditional paper or desktop processes) and competitors’ apps. In order for organizations to be successful, they must deliver mobile applications that will meet the expectations of mobile users. A key component of a good mobile user experience, as we previously identified, is the speed with which it can load and respond to clicks, swipes, taps, commands, and queries. When asked in a survey how significant speed is to a user’s overall mobile application experience, 80 percent answered “very important."

Contextually Relevant Mobile Apps

It is well known that the more personalized and contextually relevant a mobile application or website is to the user, the more successful it will be at delivering a good user experience. Mobile apps and websites by their very nature are used on the move. That means the context in which a mobile device is being used changes rapidly. This data can be about locations, time, activities, history, and behaviors. This important data must quickly be collected, analyzed, and consumed by the mobile application fast enough to personalize the user’s experience before the context changes. Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work calls this Code Halos.  This refers to all the data about a person, object, or organization that can be used to personalize and contextualize a mobile and digital experience.

The data required to personalize and contextualize an experience takes time to process and utilize. It often requires many different integrated IT systems. It needs to be captured, transmitted, analyzed, and shared in real time with the mobile application and used to personalize the user experience. The speed with which all of these steps can be executed is important. No matter how great a mobile application’s design, delays in retrieving or interacting with back-office business or IT systems equate to negative user experiences. This is true for business-to-business, business-to-employee, or business-to-consumer mobile applications. In order to be successful, IT systems must operate at speeds quick enough to satisfy all of these different categories of mobile users. This requires a serious review of every IT, operational, and business process component that ultimately impacts the speed of mobile applications.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility - Adventures and Lessons from the Mobile World Congress with Jon Reed

Diginomica's Jon Reed interviews Cognizant's Senior Analyst for Digital Transformation and Mobility, Kevin Benedict on what he learned this year at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.  This year 93,000 people came together to learn and review the newest mobile, wireless and connected smart technologies at this event.  Much has changed in the past 12 months and this interview covers many of these trends.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/8jwkhZgck1U

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 1

In my new report titled Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure, I ask 80 IT and business professionals involved in enterprise mobility to answer a series of questions.  The results will be shared here in the following article series.  You can read the introduction to this report here.

Question #1: How important will having optimized mobile applications and user experiences be to the future success of your business?

Click to Enlarge

Thirty-percent answered that optimized mobile applications and user experiences are “Critical” to the future success of their business, while seventy-percent of survey participants answered “Important” to “Very Important.”  These definitive responses suggest that businesses understand the key role mobile applications play today and will play in the future.

What is left to be determined, however, is whether businesses fully understand how much effort and investment optimizing mobile applications and user experiences will require.  The quality of the user experience, and the performances of mobile applications directly impact the user’s brand perception, and influence whether users will continue to use them.

Businesses that fail to grasp the importance of optimization, will find customers are unwilling to engage with them via mobile applications and will lose out in this quickly expanding sales channel.

Question #2: Is the demand for mobile apps forcing IT departments to rethink and change how they design and architect their IT infrastructure, processes and systems?

Click to Enlarge

The data reveals that the demand for mobile application development and support is forcing the majority (80%) of IT departments to rethink and alter the way they design and architect IT infrastructures, processes and systems. The data suggests IT environments are not optimized for mobility and this is influencing change.  

Companies must transform in order to support a mobile first and data driven world that is utilizing Code Halos strategies, and that thrives on the real-time hyper-personalization of mobile user experiences. Legacy and problematic systems must be updated, upgraded or replaced in order to support the real-time requirements of today’s mobile and always connected marketplaces.

Read the next article in this series here - Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 2.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Starbuck's Code Halos and Mobile App Strategies

Starbuck's

Starbuck's is expanding the roll-out of their mobile ordering, loyalty and payment app.   This is one of the most interesting mobile apps from a major retailer that I have seen.  Before I summarize the key features and benefits, let me share the purpose of Starbuck's latest roll-out according to The Seattle Times' Angel Gonzauez,"...to draw more customers into a digital ecosystem that is closely entwined with its rewards program, whose users tend to buy more, and more often."  This is part of their plan to double revenue to $30 billion by 2019.

Key points:

• Users of the app will be able to order and pay remotely - without being in the store.  No lines to stand in.
• The mobile app user can see, in real-time, how busy each store is (based on real-time POS data and mobile order volumes), and an estimate as to how long each store would take to deliver the order, and how long it would take you to walk or drive there.  The user can then select a store to fulfill their order based on all this real-time data.
• Your order will be waiting for you and labeled correctly (matching mobile app order and your name as spelled in your loyalty program account) when you arrive.
• The mobile app is integrated with the loyalty program and free drinks are accumulated.
• Orders will be waiting for the user when they arrive and packaged for travel.
• Starbuck's has found that consumers order more products when they have more time to review menus and research the offers (and look at the delicious pictures).
• Starbucks anticipates this will benefit their expanding menus and lunch offerings.

Starbuck's Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman said the results from early pilots of this program in Portland, Oregon surpassed all expectations for efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Embedded Sensors and Real Time POS

I love their use and analysis of real-time POS and online ordering levels, time, location and distance to deliver the optimal value to the mobile user.  They combine the use of sensors (IoT) embedded in the iPhone, plus the real-time ordering and system data, and loyalty program data to deliver the very best user experience personalized for each individual customer.  At Cognizant we call this kind of implementation Code Halos strategies.  This is where I am spending most of my research time in 2015.

This is an example of the future.  We must ask ourselves if our current IT environment can support this level of real-time customer interaction and hyper-personalization of the user experience.  If not, then we had better start working because this is where the competitive landscape of the future will be located.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

IoT and Sensors from AMS at MWC15

Last week, at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, I had the opportunity to learn some very interesting details about IoT sensors.  In this short video interview I ask AMS to demonstrate and explain how their IoT sensors work.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/JWY7UGOjWMU?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Following Two Videos on Mobile Technologies are too Controversial to Show Here

Sometimes I record video commentaries about the mobile industry that are just too controversial to publish.  They may identify trends, or identify select technologies and perhaps even vendors that you should avoid or embrace, while at other times the information is just too scary.  These two short videos, filmed in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, are examples of videos I cannot publish.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/BdI5TV3bTw0



Video Link: http://youtu.be/i5fwH2lUn-k?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw


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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Selfie Sticks - 2015's #2 Mobile Innovation Product of the Year and #9 World Wonder

Step aside Thomas Edison, there is a new invention in town - the Selfie Stick.  It is changing the world of lonely travel, perception and image.  Don't leave home without it.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/MtiFgm4P3eM?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's Connected Globe News Weekly – Week of January 11, 2015

Welcome to Connected Globe News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices.  I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article.  I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Looking for an enterprise mobility solution?  Read the Mobile Solution Directory Here!

Earlier this year, GSMA in its Intelligence Study Cellular M2M report said there will be more than 1 billion M2M connections by 2020. Read Original Content

According to a new report from the research firm Berg Insight, shipments of connected wearables reached 19 million in 2014, up from 5.9 million devices in the previous year. Read Original Content

Over the next few years, Samsung will ramp up its already aggressive efforts in the booming Internet of things, ensuring that within five years all of its hardware will be able to connect to the Internet and investing $100 million this year in its developer program. Read Original Content

B2M Solutions’ mobile software delivers valuable insight and actionable analytics for enterprise customers. Business leaders and managers within the mission critical, rugged mobile enterprise now have operational views of key business and technology analytics affecting performance and productivity. B2M software is developed with specific functionality to help organizations identify and unblock mobility problems as soon as, or even before, they occur, allowing customers to sustain critical business processes and gain competitive advantages. To Lean more visit www.B2M-Solutions.com.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by B2M Solutions

Market watcher 451 Research reported on January 6 that IoT-related mergers and acquisitions were north of $14 billion in 2014 as more than 60 companies were snapped up by Google, Samsung, Intel, Cisco, Qualcomm and others. The spending spree represented an eight-fold increase in IoT-related mergers and acquisitions over the previous year, 451 Research estimates. Read Original Content

By 2017 Samsung Electronics co-CEO Boo-Keun Yoon has said 90 percent of Samsung products will be IoT devices, and the company will hit 100 percent within five years, according to GigaOM. Read Original Content

The China Smart Meter Industry Report says the advancing smart grid construction in China spurred the constant growth of smart meter demand. By the end of 2013, 370 million smart meters had been accumulatively installed in China, and the figure is expected to hit 500 million in 2015. Read Original Content

A new report forecasts global revenue from smart meters will increase over the next decade from $5.1 billion in 2014 to $6.6 billion in 2023. The data from Navigant Research examined the worldwide market opportunities for smart electric meters. Read Original Content

By 2024 there will be an installed base of nearly 1.1 billion smart residential meters worldwide, or 57 percent market penetration according to a new dataset published by Northeast Group, LLC. Read Original Content

In Europe where a European Union directive requires 80 percent of households to have smart meters installed by 2020, penetration stood at 22 percent at end-2013 and is expected to rise to 60 percent by 2019, according to a Berg Insight report. Read Original Content

Latest Articles on http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com

Kevin Benedict Interviews Corning Inc.'s Digital Transformation Expert Grace Alcivar
An Interview with World Traveler and BI Expert Mico Yuk
Robotics and Business Process Services - The Interview
Interview with Digital Marketing Expert Will Reese
The State of Mobile Enterprise Collaboration: Challenges and Opportunities
Is Email Destroying Productivity? Hear from Expert Jack C. Crawford
Kevin Benedict Interviews Social Media Expert Gerry Moran
Kevin Benedict Interviews Digital Transformation Expert Ved Sen

Whitepapers of Note

Don't Get SMACked - How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud are Reshaping the Enterprise
Making BYOD Work for Your Organization

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict Interviews Corning Inc.'s Digital Transformation Expert Grace Alcivar

When most of us think about digital transformation, it is in the context of how mobile devices, mobile apps, big data, Code Halos, the Internet and the IoT (Internet of Things) are impacting businesses, markets, industries and economies.  Seldom do we think about the communication infrastructure that also needs to be transformed in order to support all of these changes and innovations.  In this interview, Corning Inc.'s digital transformation expert Grace Alcivar, discusses specific technology transformations and upgrades required to support these changes, and shares the details of a digital transformation project at Texas A&M's football stadium.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/DoMasHpEBiY?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The State of Mobile Enterprise Collaboration: Challenges and Opportunities

Today we are honored with a guest post from mobile expert Yaacov Cohen, the CEO of harmon.ie.  In this article Yaacov reviews the findings of a recent report titled State of Mobile Enterprise Collaboration and shares his thoughts on what the findings mean to businesses. I have interviewed him in the past and you can watch that interview here.  Enjoy!

Analyst firm Strategy Analytics predicts that the mobile enterprise business application market will nearly double from $31B in 2012 to $61B by 2018. As we invest more time and energy in mobile, the question remains: are enterprises ready to take on the challenge of providing workers with true mobile collaboration capabilities? To answer this question, we commissioned the first extensive mobile collaboration study engaging over 1,400 Business and IT users. The results demonstrate why merely giving workers the ability to send emails, share files or exchange instant messages no longer cuts it, and what barriers we must overcome to enable enterprise-wide mobile collaboration and productivity.

Click to Enlarge

In short, our research shows that mobile workers are still struggling to access critical business information as it has become distributed across cloud services and enterprise applications. There is an immediate need for alignment between IT and Business to determine a joint approach to overcome challenges and unlock the mobile opportunities in front of us. With that in mind, I’ve compiled key report takeaways across departments that reveal some of the gains and apparent shortcomings in the quest to realize a truly mobile enterprise.

The Focus is Still on Personal Productivity

The first challenge is that right now, companies are still working towards supporting personal mobile productivity rather than true team collaboration and productivity.

Today’s companies mostly enable their employees to conduct the basics of personal productivity: accessing email, company calendars and contact directories via mobile devices. 96 percent of IT and 80 percent of Business respondents state that employees in their company are able to access email from a mobile device. Business applications affording true enterprise-wide mobile collaboration saw significantly lower numbers, such as 53 percent of IT and 40 percent of Business respondents claiming to have access to Office applications on the go. While these numbers will improve, they show a major discrepancy between employees’ access to tools that boost their own productivity versus tools that aid the team as a whole.

Awareness and Adoption Not Yet Seeing Eye-to-Eye

The need for alignment between IT and Business comes starkly into focus based on our findings about awareness of mobile device policies within an organization. 83 percent of IT respondents claimed they had a policy in place, while only 46 percent of Business users reported knowledge of any mobile policy.

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When coupled with the findings from the previous takeaway about ubiquitous personal productivity tools (mobile email, calendar and contact directory access), the conclusion is clear: if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. If this awareness problem is to be overcome, IT must take on the role of a strategic advisor who enables mobile enterprise collaboration and supports the business to onboard and train employees on critical mobile collaboration capabilities.

Maturity Still Lacking, Outlook Positive

In comparison to the high number of companies providing personal productivity tools to workers, only one-third of companies are currently giving employees access to external collaboration tools that support key business activities like financial forecasting and reporting, project management and real-time collaboration on documents. Furthermore, the results show availability of mobile collaboration tools doesn’t necessarily translate into actual awareness or usage as there is consistently about a 20+ percent gap in what collaboration tools IT claims to offer versus what Business has knowledge of.

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Despite this immaturity, half of IT respondents feel that 2015 will be the “Year of Mobile Enterprise Productivity” which is many more than those predicting a “Year of Enterprise Disappointment.” This positive outlook tells us that while the current state of mobile enterprise collaboration is still immature, those keyed into the space are optimistic about its year on year growth.

SharePoint and Office 365 Lead the Platform Pack, But Other Microsoft Tools Fall Behind

Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 are the leading enterprise collaboration platforms on desktop and mobile devices, with 44 percent of all respondents reporting access. However, other Microsoft collaboration tools like Lync and Yammer fell much further down the rankings to #4 and #8 respectively. From this we can draw that while some of Microsoft’s products lead the pack, the company as a whole does not yet offer a universal collaboration platform.

This also shows that a one-size-fits-all approach to mobile enterprise collaboration either doesn’t exist yet or is not the answer to most companies’ problems. Vendor lock-in often frightens companies away from going all in on one ecosystem. True mobile collaboration and productivity may not be possible until we see more services that aggregate cloud solutions or notifications together to give workers a useful and important contextual snapshot of what is going on in their company be it in Salesforce, SharePoint, Yammer, SAP or whatever collaboration tools are in place.

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Not Yet Mature, But Gaining Ground

In the end, to realize the true value of a mobile enterprise, collaboration needs to move substantially beyond where we are today. Enterprises must design collaboration initiatives to incorporate multi-modal, real-time collaboration in order to streamline projects that directly aid the completion of critical business processes. This collaboration experience must not only be seamless, but also must consistently surface the most relevant information at the right time, whichever service it comes from. If these major hurdles can be overcome, enterprise productivity will see significant gains because employees and teams will be able to work together efficiently to ‘get the job done,’ – which at the end of the day is what really matters.

For more in-depth information, please see the full State of Mobile Enterprise Collaboration Report. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you view the current state of collaboration in the mobile enterprise, and how you’re tackling mobile collaboration in your company. Connect with me at on Twitter at @YaacovC.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly - Week of December 7, 2014

Welcome to the Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly, our newest online newsletter. Mobile Cyber Security will focus on the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile and cyber security, mobile malware, mobile application management, cyber warfare (and more!) that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market trend information.

Also read Connected Globe News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Looking for an enterprise mobility solution?  Read the Mobile Solution Directory Here!

New security measures by Apple have reduced phone theft by as much as 40 percent, a study from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has shown. Read Original Content

Mobile device security software market is forecast by Infonetics Research to increase at a 25 percent compound annual growth rate topping $4 billion by 2018. Read Original Content

Analysts at Research and Markets forecast the global BYOD security market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 35.23 percent over the period 2014-2019. Read Original Content

B2M Solutions’ mobile software delivers valuable insight and actionable analytics for enterprise customers. Business leaders and managers within the mission critical, rugged mobile enterprise now have operational views of key business and technology analytics affecting performance and productivity. B2M software is developed with specific functionality to help organizations identify and unblock mobility problems as soon as, or even before, they occur, allowing customers to sustain critical business processes and gain competitive advantages. To Lean more visit www.B2M-Solutions.com.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by B2M Solutions

Financial-services companies plan to bolster their cyber security budgets by about $2 billion over the next two years, according to accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Read Original Content

A particularly nasty mobile malware campaign targeting Android users has hit between four million and 4.5 million Americans since January of 2013, according to an estimate by Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company. Read Original Content

In the recent Mobile Cyber Threats report from Kaspersky Lab and INTERPOL, it was revealed that Android is by far the biggest target for mobile malware. Because of the huge Android user base and being an open platform, malware designed for Android has the greatest odds of success and easy to exploit as well. Read Original Content

Blackberry has announced a security partnership with Samsung aimed at bolstering the encryption on the firm’s Android smartphones. Read Original Content

MasterCard has revealed plans to make use of biometric information to replace passwords required for online payments, harnessing technologies such as Apple’s TouchID fingerprint scanner found on iPhones and iPads. Read Original Content

Latest Articles on http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com

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Mobile Expert Interviews: B2M's CEO Julie Purves
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Whitepapers of Note

Don't Get SMACked - How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud are Reshaping the Enterprise
Making BYOD Work for Your Organization

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Internet of My Things and How It Works

IoT MyThings

In this article, my ever brilliant friend and colleague, Ved Sen, shares what the IoT (Internet of Things) is really about and the processes, technologies, systems and strategies behind it.
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So there’s been all this talk about the Internet of Things. What the heck is it? You may well be cautious. Especially since it’s currently perched at the peak of the Gartner Hype curve for 2014.

So I started thinking about this by listing all the ‘things’ I interact with. From my house & home to the trains I take and from the clothes I wear to the hotel room I might live in on my travel. Obviously you can get many levels in the hierarchy. The home is a complex construct, and comprises many sub-things. Example – rooms, walls, plumbing. Some of these, such as ‘heating’ may have further sub-components – radiators, boilers, etc.  The resultant picture looks something like this, at a very high level. Of course, this is hugely inadequate for detail, but you get the conceptual model.

Then I started thinking about an appropriately benign and traditionally less intelligent ‘thing’ – like a window. Everybody has windows at home and they affect our everyday lives.  They have states (open/ shut), based on the environment and conditions. For example we associate safety, air-conditioning and sunlight with windows being open or closed, and based on the weather, time of day, etc.  So I drew this table of the different emotions and feelings we derive, the specific benefits they deliver, the activity or state associated with this and the conditions under which these states need to be enabled.

IoT State and Benefits

At this point, I came to an important realisation. Products can be smart and controllable, they can even react to the environment, all without the help of the internet. For example, we have some Velux(TM) windows on the skylights. These windows come with a remote control, they can be opened and closed and they can also react to weather conditions and close if left open when it starts to rain. So they are actually smart, in some way, and possess the capability to communicate. They’re just not on the internet. The challenge of this model is that my ability to control these outcomes is limited to the pre-set automations and my being in close proximity – i.e. at home. (Disclaimer: I’m obviously referring to the specific models we have installed. Velux does not have any IOT proclamations on it’s website, but this is not to say that they don’t have or are planning to launch models that come with their own smartphone apps, which allow control of windows from anywhere.)

This excellent article by Michael Porter & James Heppelman posits that all products in future should have:

1. Mechanical/ electrical components
2. Software components
3. Communication components 

These three collectively make products smarter and ultimately evolve to product systems (e.g. home security) and then to a ‘system of systems’ model (e.g. connected homes) – which spans an entire problem domain, according to the authors.

The kind of activities that we can perform on smart products evolves from monitoring, to control, optimisation and then to autonomy. Ultimately this leads, according to the authors, to improved competitive performance via operational efficiencies and strategic positioning choices. Often, forcing the question ‘What business are we in?’

So for example the Velux windows we have installed, have a rain sensor, which allows them to automatically close if it starts to rain, they don’t have a sun-sensor, which allows them to re-open when the sun comes out again. Of course, I may not want them to open just because the sun is out. So it needs my intervention. I can only do this from home, currently, which is a constraint. Putting the Velux windows to one side, for all my windows, I would also like to be reminded if ground floor windows are left open at night or when I’m away. If I had pollen allergies, I would probably like to be alerted if the pollen count is too high, or have the windows close. I would like to be able to open all multiple windows or close them, even if I’m not at home, based on weather conditions.

So you see, we have a need for state information (monitoring) as well as control. I might even have settings for ‘sunny day’ which applies a set of commands to all windows. This is the optimisation that the article above refers to. These control should extend to blinds (effectively these are a part of my window settings). This is where we consider windows as a product system, whereas currently, we tend to have completely different suppliers for these 2 products (windows and curtains/blinds). Any maker of smart windows must therefore consider blinds and curtains as a part of their product system.
Now, considering any smart and connected product, we could argue that they have sensors, which generate data, which are used by apps, which enable access and control of the product, and provide additional functions that ultimately deliver a benefit. The sensors are obviously on-board the device/ product. But the data generated could be anywhere, typically on a cloud, so that the apps and the access can take place through any connected control point (such as a mobile phone).

IoT Data Access Function Layers

This is where the internet of things really kicks in. In my previous example of the Velux window models which we have installed, the data, access, applications and controls all sit within a closed system involving the window and the remote control. You could argue therefore that a true IoT model requires a cloud based data and access model and an ability to use the data and control/ monitor the product from any device and application that is authorised.

Of course, everybody looking at the Internet of things should bear in mind Bruce Sterling’s SPIME model (derived from space + time). According to Sterling, the SPIME object has 6 facets:

1. identification
2. location
3. data mining
4. computer aided design & construction
5. prototyping
6. lifecycle management

Using these, we can track the history of any object from concept to grave.

Stepping back a bit, the Internet of Things seems like a catch-all neologism to encapsulate a number of related concepts. It involves:

• smart and connected products
• multiple types of open and closed networks
• robotics
• cloud based access
• decision analytics
• functions ranging from monitoring, control and optimisation

It can also involve single products or groups of products. Many smart products today are autonomously capable of performing advanced functions which have nothing to do with the internet of anything. The Roomba vacuum cleaner is a great example of an exceptional product that doesn’t really need to connect to the Internet.

Most individual products also tend to ignore or be indifferent to the network effect, which kicks in when we consider multiple elements in the same network. For example, my windows may be rain-sensitive, but I might have other devices, products and appliances at home which may be influenced by the occurrence of rain. Does each product need to have it’s own rain sensor? In my IOT wish list, my smart windows can communicate to other appliances at home. So for example, the washing machine can run an extra spin cycle when it rains, so clothes dry in the same time, and conversely when it’s sunny, it can reduce the spin cycle to conserve energy. For this to happen, I need a network standard for my connected home network that multiple devices can connect to (i.e. my window can ‘talk’ to my washing machine). A problem that the DLNA among many others, has been seeking to solve for years.

The true value of the IoT thus seems to become clearer when we step into the details and away from buzzwords. Much like anything else really!  And the winners as always will be those businesses which are able to truly focus on:

• design thinking
• benefits
• elegance of use
• great experiences
• excellent engineering

Companies who will be bold enough to rethink their business models and honestly answer the question ‘what business are we in?’ – allowing them to move from selling a product to delivering a composite service which may include a physical product. It might even mean changing the commercial model where the product is only ‘leased’ to the consumer who actually buys the service rather than acquires an asset.

Meanwhile I will dream about smart, connected windows which can deliver safety, sunshine, comfort to my home. As far as consumers are concerned, the I in IoT should really stand for ‘invisible technology’.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.